starting to crawl...

It's been a memorable first week in Egypt, acclimating to our new home. There's the environmental stuff--like the hot days and cool nights, polluted Cairo(noise, air, and trash), and biting ants--, the culture stuff--like the new language I'm now learning, the new greeting, and the new food (oh, but its so good...)--,and then there's the new community I find myself in, including the awesome eight other Americans here, Carole--the volunteer coordinator/Egyptologist, the guard Essam who won't let us through the gate without a minimum five minute conversation, or our new friends Juel, Ismail, and Mohammed--the boys who run the tamiyya shop (by which I am surviving right now). So many 'news' that its almost overwhelming. But traveling is the best way to learn how to laugh at yourself and the funny things we as humans do.

Yesterday was the trip to Fayoum--an oasis city about two hours from Cairo--for the celebration of the opening of a new Christian school. Following our police escort(Fayoum used to be a hotbed of anti-governmental activity in the 90's but now the escorts seem to be a way to employ more people) which consisted of 8 guys in the back of a pick-up, we disembarked for the mayor's address, the principles' address, the headmaster's address, the assistant principle's address (they gave us Americans pepsi at this point), and one more guy's address. We shook a lot of hands and congratulated a lot of people--you could tell that it meant a lot to them for us to be there. Not only did it put a further stamp on the shin-dig with the token Americans, but the message of solidarity was strong as many of us Americans had gone to Christian schools in America. The Christians of Fayoum then provided us with some box lunches and sent us on our way back to Cairo (which incidentally took us by the pyramids--they are much, much larger than I had imagined). We had to be back for Arabi class which starts at 3 every day and goes until 7. More on that later...